With more intelligence being integrated into next generation communication end devices (e.g. mobile telephones, cordless phones), higher expectations are put on such communication end devices to handle various interactions with the network. Examples for such interactions are multi-party call features such as call transfer, call hold, conference call, etc. The provisioning of such network interaction features within a communication network typically requires a coordinated provision of appropriate interaction settings and/or interaction firmware on the communication end devices and on the application servers within the network.
A traditional approach to handling such coordinated provision of interaction settings is to rely on an end-to-end device management system. Whenever the network is deploying an interaction feature that requires different interaction settings on the communication end devices, new configuration settings are pushed to the clients (i.e. towards the communication end devices) via a standard management interface, e.g. TR-69. If the interaction feature to be deployed requires new service logic in addition to or alternatively to updated configuration settings, a firmware upgrade needs to be deployed on the communication end devices. Such a centralized device management approach not only introduces deployment lead times for new interaction services and features that jeopardize the agility of next generation application deployment, but is also prone to errors. Furthermore, the great number of different types of communication end devices requires the provision of a large number of different configuration settings and firmware upgrades for the different types of communication end devices. Overall, a centralized device management approach requires significant financial and time efforts, in particular to validate multiple handsets/clients within a given network infrastructure.
The use of Javascript/HTML5-based web clients on the communication end devices makes the upgrade of the communication devices to new configuration settings easier, but it is almost impossible for operators to make sure that the same user experience can be guaranteed across all clients.
The present document addresses the above mentioned shortcomings of traditional schemes for providing new network interaction features and services. The described methods and systems enable a fast and homogeneous implementation of network interaction services on various different types of communication end devices.